In the old days if you wanted to do wireless protocol analysis you really needed some specialised equipment. An AirPcap USB interface was a pretty coveted device in the 2010's as it allowed for sniffing of 802.11n wireless frames directly in software like Wireshark on a Windows laptop. There was also AirMagnet Wi-Fi Analyzer that required a specific AirMagnet card and driver for packet analysis and Wi-Fi troubleshooting. The cost of these tools meant that it was difficult for the average Network Engineer to be readily equipped with such capabilities. Then it became widely known that Apple MacBooks were able to switch their built-in Wi-Fi interface to monitor mode for native wireless sniffing. MacOS quickly became a popular device of choice for Wireless Professionals but many of the applications required the Windows OS to run. The lack of dual OS support still left many needing multiple devices to complete their tool-kit. Many of the legacy applications that didn't bring support to MacOS eventually became obsolete. A good example of this is how AirMagnet Survey lost most of it's market share to Ekahau, which eventually brought out a MacOS version of it's Wi-Fi modelling and survey software.
Wireshark 3.0.0 for Windows introduces a new capture driver that replaces the long standing WinPcap. It's amazing how long WinPcap has been around - I draw the indication of it's breadth of use from the Winpcap.org website. "Thanks to its set of features, WinPcap has been the packet capture and filtering engine for many open source and commercial network tools, including protocol analyzers, network monitors, network intrusion detection systems, sniffers, traffic generators and network testers. Some of these networking tools, like Wireshark, Nmap, Snort, and ntop are known and used throughout the networking community." Thanks WinPcap! We've seen some long hours together... Introducing Npcap. OK, so paying homage to a capture driver and welcoming it's replacement is pretty nerdy. I get it. But there is more too it (it gets nerdier). Take a peek at the installation options... The big one here is the support for raw 802.11 traffic monitoring! It's important to note some of the other items though... capturing loopback adapters can be really useful, restricting captures to Admin only could be strategically smart and providing backwards compatibility to applications that don't yet use the new driver but are expecting to still have access to WinPcap is just plain respectful. They're cool, but monitor mode in Windows takes the cake! So at this point of the install you might imagine my excitement. Well, it didn't turn out to be as straight forward as just installing Npcap. I was half hoping to just open Wireshark and tick the monitor box much like I can on my MacBook - No Dice! Off to the manual I go https://nmap.org/npcap/guide/npcap-users-guide.html#npcap-feature-dot11-wireshark - Wireshark only honours monitor mode when it is set within the Wireshark GUI but it's not available. So I read about the WLANhelper.exe tool where you can manually set monitor mode on an interface https://nmap.org/npcap/guide/npcap-devguide.html#npcap-feature-dot11 The first time I tried enabling monitor mode on my built-in NIC (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265) I got an error: I kept getting the error and found I could check the available modes for my wireless interface with the command: wlanhelper <nic guid> modes So it looks like the Intel 7265 can't do monitor mode. So what can? I found this list https://secwiki.org/w/Npcap/WiFi_adapters I do have a Savvius branded Netgear A6210. To get it recognised in Wireshark I installed the driver from the Netgear website and rebooted the laptop. I checked the wlanhelper.exe and verified the adapter existed there too. My first attempt to capture in monitor mode resulted in no packets. Second time round I disabled promiscuous mode and it worked a charm. As indicated in the Wi-Fi Adapters list this NIC doesn't pass down the Wi-Fi frequency so the radiotap header doesn't include info about the channel being captured so I had to hunt for that detail in a Beacon frame. The documentation doesn't make it apparent how you would change the frequency for the capture - there is an option command using the wlanhelper tool. Enable monitor mode for the NIC in wlanhelper wlanhelper <guid> mode monitor or use the wlanhelper -i interactive mode then set the channel wlanhelper <guid> channel 52 check the channel wlanhelper <guid> channel Wireshark will now be capturing from that channel as set. This can be set prior to capture or changed during a current capture.
Happy capturing team! Download Wireshark here https://www.wireshark.org/#download
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Today I am sitting in on the first Asia Pacific #WiFiDesignDay - kindly brought to Sydney, Australia by @ekahau. Here is a brief play by play as it runs...
Mark Krischer from Cisco kicked off the day of guest presentations explaining the fundamentals of RF. The key take away was revealed nice and early. “You have two levers” which are increasing signal and reducing noise. This is a great lesson for newcomers to the WiFi space but equally important as a reminder to old-hats. To the new comer it creates new questions about how you might go about achieving positive outcomes with these levers. For old hats it should keep their minds wizzing around the concepts and realities of what these levers truly encompass. Matt Fowler (Mist) Discussed A.I. I’m not a fan of using the term A.I. to-date because it simply is a misnomer in the context it’s used. To be fair he also spoke a lot of Machine Learning which is actually the technology being implemented today (and called often wrongly labelled A.I.). It was great to see where Machine Learning can, Will and does improve our Wi-Fi networks and the workflows of those managing Wi-Fi networks. Jim Steinbacher from WatchGuard talked us through the present day threats and reality of hacking WiFi. The climax of Jim’s presentation was when he admitted he had been running a Karma attack using a discreetly placed Wi-Fi Pineapple. Jim was able to demonstrate how the attendees clients were sharing too much as he listed off the SSIDs many thought were private at their homes. It was cool to see the disbelief across the room. A lot of the attendees were initially stumped as to how this was happening. Having Keith Parsons (WLAN Professionals) in town was a treat. These days Keith comes to Australia a lot more than he used to to run various training courses (ESCE and CWNA). Keith started by encouraging those in the room who weren’t on Twitter or blogging to start both today. It was the classic hands up to solemnly swear they’ll get on it. Then Keith got to the meat... He explained that WiFi is working, even when the experience is bad. Keith showed the group that a system can be brittle if you don’t follow design rules. His analogy was brilliant, utilising LEGO and a simple set of requirements. What a great introduction. Keith is a master of story telling - and this is why you should do whatever it takes to go and sit in on one of Keith’s training courses. Even (if not especially) if you think you know it all about Wi-Fi. More to come after lunch... Aaron Scott (Aruba) has been spending a lot of time designing and overseeing the installation of a sports stadium in Sydney. He shared today some of his experiences on this project. After overcoming some extreme voice attenuation caused by a massive flame-red beard Aaron kicked off by outlining the great variation in requirements across the different areas and user scenarios in a stadium (from Media personnel to spectators lining up for food). Not everyone will have the pleasure of designing Wi-Fi for a stadium but a lot of the theory that goes in to planning this type of environment can be very useful across other designs. Aaron explained a method to calculating the total system throughput which can aid the backhaul planning requirements wired and Internet connectivity. From multi-stage stadium deployments (over years) to half covered, half non covered stadiums - Aaron has met many challenges which had to be overcome. Cost considerations and engineering experiences were great insights throughout the presentation. The day’s formalities were finalised with an expert panel prepared to answer the toughest attendees questions. Matt Fowler, Aaron Scott, Stephen Cooper, Keith Parsons and Jussi Kiviniemi sat up front and shared knowledge and opinion about:
There is an Easter Egg on the iOS version of the Ookla Speedtest app. Hold down the Go button for a long period of time until your phone starts vibrating. Then there was Beer! Thanks for following along. WPA3 is coming fast and I'm excited to see how quickly client devices adopt the benefits of the incorporated security concepts. Using SAE instead of PSK is a fascinating change. Perfect forward secrecy is exciting, especially in when offline attacks of PSK protected data became easier using hashcat. (See https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-7717.html August 4, 2018). There are now a lot of new things to learn about. Obviously the two key important factors with WPA3 (as they are in WPA2) are the authentication of users trying to access the network and privacy of data using encryption. We use these features to protect the system and the information between sent across it because Wi-Fi operates in the air and physical security is pretty much always an impossible factor. Along side the announcement of the upcoming availability of WPA3 was news of another capability called Opportunist Wireless Encryption (OWE). This brings a capability that allows for privacy over open wireless networks. To date all traffic transmitted to or from an open SSID is sniffable and does not require decryption. A MacBook running Wireshark is all you need to to catch the human readable wireless frames. OWE is described in RFC 8110 which was written by Dan Harkins (Aruba) and Warren Kumari (Google). I kept hearing about the Diffie-Hellman exchange and understood that it was the function that allowed two things (a wireless client and Access Point in this case) to communicate just enough information between each other to derive a complex key. It happens in such a way that if any other party was to intercept the communication they could not derive the key. This is cool. Diffie-Hellman is used in a lot of technology we take advantage of day to day. We take advantage of the Diffie-Hellman exchange without even realising how important it is to cryptography and privacy of our data. Written by Matt Sutherland
Have you ever been asked if Wi-Fi is bad for our health? If you work with Wi-Fi you will have faced this question at least once, if not once every other month. There is a lot of misinformation, but lets not start with that. Recently I was asked to provide advice on the safety of Wi-Fi in regards to human health - this came up because I had made a recommendation to place Access Points underneath seats in a tiered seat (cinema style) theatre. The under-seat design is a story for another time. It occurred to me that the audience who had raised the concern of the proximity of Access Points to people would most likely be non-technical and would not had heard "The Spiel" before. I wanted to be as prepared as possible and armed with the most up to date information I could find. So I spent an entire Saturday reading through information - here is what I found. When reading about the effects of electromagnetic energy exposure it is important to note the radio frequencies of Wi-Fi are limited in range. Many of the studies and documents that are available relate to much wider frequencies (e.g. 0 - 300 GHz) or very targeted frequencies used in other technologies such as cellular base stations for mobile phones. The most common frequencies used for Wi-Fi occur between 2.4 GHz and 5.9 GHz. It is also important to note that the majority of Wi-Fi deployments will operate at a transmission power much lower to the services in other frequencies such as cellular, TV and Radio broadcast. While I've provided links to the various articles and content I have also included snippets for those who find it all a bit TLDR. Who's Who?ARPANSA - Australian Radiaton Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency Australian Government’s primary authority on radiation protection and nuclear safety. ARPANSA protect the Australian people and the environment from the harmful effects of radiation through understanding risks, best practice regulation, research, policy, services, partnerships and engaging with the community. ACMA - Australian Communications and Media Authority The independent statutory authority tasked with ensuring most elements of Australia's media and communications legislation, related regulations, and numerous derived standards and codes of practice operate effectively and efficiently, and in the public interest. ACMA is a 'converged' regulator, created to oversee the convergence of the four 'worlds' of telecommunications, broadcasting, radio communications and the internet. WHO - World Health Organisation The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The IEEE Standards Authority is an organization within IEEE that develops global standards in a broad range of industries, including: power and energy, biomedical and health care, information technology and robotics, telecommunication among others. What They SayACMA: The ACMA and EME https://www.acma.gov.au/Citizen/Spectrum/About-spectrum/EME-hub/the-acma-and-eme The ACMA regulates EME from consumer devices such as mobile phones, baby monitors, cordless phones and smart meters with inbuilt antennas through the Radiocommunications (Compliance Labelling - Electromagnetic Radiation) Notice 2014 (the EME Labelling Notice) and the Radiocommunications (Electromagnetic Radiation-Human Exposure) Standard 2014 (the Human Exposure Standard). AMCA: Wi-Fi https://www.acma.gov.au/Citizen/Spectrum/About-spectrum/EME-hub/wifi The ACMA has found that EME exposure from Wi-Fi transmitters is significantly below the limits of the ARPANSA Standard. ARPANSA: Wi-Fi in Schools Measurement Study https://www.arpansa.gov.au/research/surveys/wi-fi-in-schools-measurement-study This study showed that the typical RF exposure of children from Wi-fi at school is very low and comparable or lower to other sources in the environment such as radio and TV broadcasts and mobile phone base stations. ARPANSA: Wi-Fi and Health https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding-radiation/radiation-sources/more-radiation-sources/wi-fi It is the assessment of ARPANSA and other national and international health authorities, including the World Health Organization (WHO), that there is no established scientific evidence of adverse health effects below current exposure limits. WHO: Electromagnetic Fields and Public Health http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs304/en/ In fact, due to their lower frequency, at similar RF exposure levels, the body absorbs up to five times more of the signal from FM radio and television than from base stations. This is because the frequencies used in FM radio (around 100 MHz) and in TV broadcasting (around 300 to 400 MHz) are lower than those employed in mobile telephony (900 MHz and 1800 MHz) and because a person's height makes the body an efficient receiving antenna. Further, radio and television broadcast stations have been in operation for the past 50 or more years without any adverse health consequence being established. IEEE: Standard for Safety Levels with Respect to Human Exposure to Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Fields, 3 kHz to 300 GHz https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1626482/ Federal Legislation: Radiocommunications (Electromagnetic Radiation - Human Exposure) Standard 2014 https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/F2014L00960 The measurement methods to determine if the aware user device or non- aware user device meets the standard for performance in subsection 8 (1) or 8 (2) are the measurement methods identified in EN 62209-2 or IEC 62209- 2. A test report must comply with the requirements in EN 62209-2 or IEC 62209-2 which contained the measurement methods identified in accordance with subsection (2). WHO: Handbook on Establishing a Dialoge on Risks from Electromagnetic Fields http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/risk_hand/en/ Public Health England: Exposure to electromagnetic fields from wireless computer networks http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140714093801tf_/http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/Radiation/UnderstandingRadiation/UnderstandingRadiationTopics/ElectromagneticFields/RadioWaves/WiFi/WiFiprojectreportonresultsSeptember2011/ The duty factor investigation shows that laptops and access points transmit for only small proportions of the time during typical lessons less than 1% of the time for laptops and less than 12% for access points. This means that the time-averaged exposure arising from the use of laptops in schools is even lower than those when laptops were measured under controlled conditions in the laboratory, and the SARs will also be smaller than those estimated above. Who Else Shares InformationThe Wi-Fi Alliance and Wi-Fi equipment manufacturers (aka Vendors) also submit perspectives and points of information to the mix. I deliberately leave material sourced from these organisations to last as it is, in most cases, referencing other material already covered by other organisations. It's also worth noting that both vendors and the Wi-Fi Alliance have an obvious bias towards finding and presenting the positive side of the story. It is my opinion that the Wi-Fi Alliance should not be considered a reliable source for health or medical based information. Vendor information should be followed for safe use and operation guidelines but like information from the Wi-Fi Alliance should not be used as the basis for medical advice. WFA - Wi-Fi Alliance Wi-Fi Alliance defines innovative, standards-based Wi-Fi technologies and programs, certifies products that meet quality, performance, security, and capability standards, provides industry thought leadership, and advocates globally for fair spectrum rules. WFA: Wi-Fi® and Health/Safety Brochure https://www.wi-fi.org/download.php?file=/sites/default/files/private/Wi-Fi_and_Health_Brochure_2015_0.pdf The wireless industry continually monitors information about RF health and related regulatory or policy changes to stay informed of up-to-date research and to be sure that the public can continue to have confidence in the safety of its products. In addition, Wi-Fi Alliance® supported two independent research studies both published in Health Physics, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The first was an independent exposure study that conducted 356 measurements at 55 sites (including schools and hospitals) in four countries around the world. This study concluded that in all cases, the measured Wi-Fi signal levels were very far below international exposure limits (IEEE C95.1-2005 and ICNIRP) and in nearly all cases, far below other RF signals in the same environments. WFA: Wi-Fi and Health https://www.wi-fi.org/wi-fi-and-health Due to the ubiquity of Wi-Fi technology, questions about the safety of radio waves and Wi-Fi devices tend to arise from time to time. The wireless industry takes these concerns very seriously. Aruba’s Position on Health Concerns associated with Radio Frequency Exposure from WiFi https://arubapedia.arubanetworks.com/arubapedia/images/4/43/Aruba_Statement_on_WiFi_Health_Concerns.pdf Aruba is committed to providing products which are safe for our customers to own and use. Aruba’s wireless products are tested to ensure that they meet international RF safety standards. RF safety standards are regularly reviewed against the latest scientific studies to ensure they continue to protect the public’s health. Aruba: Regulatory Compliance and Safety Information Guide (AP-320) http://support.arubanetworks.com/Documentation/tabid/77/DMXModule/512/Command/Core_Download/Method/attachment/Default.aspx?EntryId=21410 RF Radiation Exposure Statement: This equipment complies with FCC RF radiation exposure limits. This equipment should be installed and operated with a minimum distance of 7.87 inches (20cm) between the radiator and your body for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz operations. Aruba: HPE Safety and Compliance Information Guide http://support.arubanetworks.com/Documentation/tabid/77/DMXModule/512/Command/Core_Download/Method/attachment/Default.aspx?EntryId=26048 Exposure to Radio Frequency Radiation: The radiated output power of this device is below the FCC radio exposure limits. Nevertheless, the device should be used in such a manner that the potential for human contact during normal operation is minimized. To avoid the possibility of exceeding the FCC radio frequency exposure limits, human proximity to the antennas should not be less than 20 cm (8 inches) during normal operation. What's Next?There is always a possibility that the organisations referenced above will adopt new testing or theories which bring a different perspective. I recommend you stay informed and periodically review the information available. If you do find what I've shared here useful please let me know with a comment below.
Wireshark is super powerful! You just need to learn how to increase your chances of finding needles in haystacks. Needles are the packets and frames which hold the forensic truth of what actually happened, the haystack is the rest of the junk packets and frames that usually get scooped up in the process of the capture. Here are a couple of easy steps to filter both in detail and visually for some interesting types of packets. Filtering for ARP frames in Wireshark is simple. For an existing packet capture just type arp and hit enter/return in the display filter bar. The corresponding packets will show only ones with the protocol type of ARP. to edit. Filtering for MDNS is equally as simple. In the display filter bar you can type mdns which will filter the displayed packets to those that match the protocol of MDNS. If you would like to isolate to Apple Bonjour specifically you can write a display filter for packets with a destination IP address of 224.0.0.251 as displayed below. Once we know how to display specific types of packets in Wireshark we can display those packets in graphs and see their relation to each other. I really like using the I/O Graph function of Wireshark to see the relative percentage of ARP or MDNS packets to the total number of packets in a visual way. To get to the I/O Graph click on Statistics in the Menu bar and find I/O Graph. Typically the I/O Graph will open displaying a line graph which represents the packets per second over time like below: By including extra details using the display filters previously mentioned you can get a visual representation of the number of ARP packets vs the total number of packets per second. On a quiet network (overnight when no one is around) the ARP protocol might be pretty much the only type of traffic present as devices keep their ARP tables up to date. But during the day you don't want ARP to be a huge percentage of traffic on your main client network segment - this might indicate an issue which would need to be further investigated. To differentiate between the quiet and busy times on your network it is worth taking some sample captures from various points on the network and analysing the packets per second to see what is 'expected' or 'normal'. The more you look at it the more understanding you will get for the norms in your environment. To include this you simply add an additional graph detail by clicking the Plus button below the graph details pane and entering a new display filter with a customised name: Be sure to colour your new line in a different colour so you can easily see the difference between it and other lines on the graph. Wireshark can be used in the same way for 802.11 frame captures. For example you might be able to display broadcast frames vs total frames per second within the I/O Graph, or maybe visualise management and control frames vs data frames. As you learn more display filters the I/O Graph function of Wireshark can become very powerful.
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